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Something I’m working on for my next campaign, feel free to use it for your personal campaign.

Elves

The lives of elves are driven by what they call their song. Each elf has their own song, it is the way they live their lives, it drives them and gives them purpose. When they enter trance they feel their song flowing through them.

Eversong Woods

The leaves and trees of the Eversong Woods whisper fragments of an ancient song. The elves who dwell there venerate the song and being a bard is a highly respected profession as bard have learned to manipulate the song to create magic. Indeed Bards are said to have originated in the Eversong. There are a number of Elven settlements within the Eversong including the capital city of Sadir.

Ivia (Meaning Light in Elven)

The Elven Kingdom of Ivia finds it’s home in the Eversong and surrounding lands. The capital of Ivia is Sadir, which means song in Elven.

Sardirin (Song Touched Elves)

The song touched elves not only have their own song the song of the forest has touched them and is a part of them.

Ability Score Increase: Your Charisma score increases by 1.

Musically Trained: You are proficient with performance and one instrument.

Song Weaver: Once per day you can tap into the song to give yourself an advantage on Performance or Musical Instrument Checks.

Song Spell: You can touch the songs of others, and can cast the Message cantrip.

In one of the games we’re playing right now a player has an interest in who’s attractive in a tavern. To save the GM some energy I made a tavern generator. Well at first it was just an NPC generator, but it evolved as the GM made requests.

My friends and I resisted switching to 3rd edition D&D from 2nd edition until one of us actually sat down to look at the rules. Even then we had to drag on gamer out of his comfort zone, basically saying we aren’t playing 2nd edition anymore, 3rd edition is good.

We switched to 3.5 when those rules came out because we enjoyed 3rd edition and 3.5 made some welcome changes.

When 4th Edition came out, I bought the rules, but was frankly disgusted with what they had done to game I had been playing in one form or another for nearly fifteen years at that time. We stayed with 3.5 for a long time.

Eventually we heard about Pathfinder, bought the book, and realized that it was what 4th edition should of been if you were progressing from 3.5. Our group switched and we’ve been playing Pathfinder for the last few years.

I love Pathfinder you can do anything you want with a character and it has an amazing depth of resources to pull from. However sometimes Pathfinder gets a bit unwieldy when it comes to rules and the same depth of resources requires looking at almost lots of scenarios and saying “How will this work here?”

Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition is a new thing, it has the feels like the D&D of my youth some of which had been lost in successive editions. However it’s not a complex machine like 3rd Ed, 3.5, or Pathfinder. The rules are much simpler and straight forward than any of the previously mentioned systems. The unwieldy and complex rule systems that required looking things up has been replaced by something much more slimmed down and and straight forward. The book is well designed, and the game seems geared to encourage role-playing.

When I’ve watched people make characters, the system seems to scream to them to role-play. I haven’t seen anyone make a character and min-max in the way I’ve seen people do this in Pathfinder. This could be because it’s a new system, but I think things like backgrounds and the way things are presented really drive home the fact that you’re here to role-playing, not just wade through the bodies of monsters unfortunate to cross your path.

When it comes to the actual rules they are light and easy to wield, the only time we’ve had to look things up is when we’ve never done something before. Usually whatever the answer it is usually the simpler one. That being said to be a fair review, the index of the Player’s Handbook is terrible and looking things up is a pain. So it’s good that the rules are simple.

As a GM the monster stats are much easier to read than those of previous editions and Pathfinder. That being said they are laid out differently enough from character sheets that I sometimes have to take a moment to find the information I’m looking for. This will probably go away with time, but I might make monster sheets over time.

I’ve only played a couple sessions so far, but I am very happy with 5th Edition and am looking forward to playing it more.

Wandering Master’s Sake Bottle

Aura faint alteration/conjuration school; CL 3rd

Slot none; Price 2,430gp; Weight 1 lbs.

Description

This Sake bottle made from a gourd with a cork sealing the opening. If the lid is closed and a command word is spoken the bottle fills with water, if the bottle is already filled with water and the command word is spoken the water turns to Sake as per the enhance water spell. The bottle can turn water to Sake three times a day. The secret to making these bottles were taught to Filsandros by his master, who asked to be buried with his.

Brandy of Dwarf Cleaning

Aura: Faint Transmutation; CL 1st;

Slot: None; Price: 50 gold; Weight: 3 lbs;

Description
This good quality brandy has no affect on anyone but a dwarf. A dwarf who drinks the brandy becomes instantly cleaned and groomed and smells faintly of potpourri for the next hour. There is enough brandy for six people (or one thirsty dwarf).

When I saw the “The Reward” I felt that it in many ways encompassed how I feel about gaming with friends. The people behind it are trying to make it series via Kickstarter. I highly recommend watching “The Reward” and if you like it please help make the series happen.